Oh JA Oh Ja

Winkelmann

Lying absolutely stark naked in the Kassel
Kunstverein, on a bench in a futuristic-looking solarium, with its streamlined
design and the ring of midnight-blue light around it making it look like
a Star Wars spaceship that’s strayed a bit too close to the sun and is
now highly energized and continuing its wanderings through the vastness
of this milky way and others too, I get the hunch that once again, or once
more, I’m playing a crucial leading role in a Westerwinter work. Not that
I’ve got anything to beef about, because this is actually being done with
my consent – I am, in other words, in full control of my faculties, intellectual
and physical alike. This has definitely not always been so. Or let’s say
„not altogether so.“ First time around, I devoted a large chunk of my psychic
capacities, at least, and some of my physical powers, too. For her contribution
to the almost invisible exhibition, as suggested by its title: “fast nichts/almost
invisible,” which I organized in 1994 in an old transformer station at
Singen on the shores of Lake Constance, Westerwinter had ordained for herself
and for me the sampling of a bottle of Jack Daniels. Not for a split second
had I imagined the dimensions that this project would assume, but once
I’d said “Yes,” I had no other choice but to go along with it to the bitter
end. Westerwinter never let me out of her sight throughout the opening.
From her shiny red leather handbag, at regular but frequent intervals,
she plucked a bottle of Whiskey of the aforementioned brand, inviting me
each time she did so to take a swig, before in turn sampling it with a
no less generous gulp. You will have guessed the fatal consequences of
that evening, for me and for the artist herself. Next day, Westerwinter
confessed to me, after respectively swallowing umpteen pills to ward off
hangovers and headaches, that she had never before invested so much of
herself in a work. I agreed wholeheartedly.

But why am I telling you all this in such
detail? There’s no doubt that this work numbers among Westerwinter’s most
significant pieces. Two important strategies in her work, hitherto independent
of one another, are here associated for the very first time. On the one
hand, there is the instrumentalization, already broached in the “I love...“
works, of those who make decisions in the art world, i.e. exhibition curators,
collectors and gallery owners. Without acting in concert, these decision-makers
become both part of the work and the artist’s tool. Her declaration of
love is not just the disinterested avowal of a sentimental bound, but it
openly offers, as spectacle, its strategic functionalization in proliferation.
The second “component“ resides in the performative aspect, in the potential
integration of the onlooker as active and decisive subject. The “Namensaquarelle,”
which, in the interval, have turned into a set of autonomous works, may
here be regarded as forerunners. The traditional subject of the commissioned
portrait is aligned with the taste of the day, in a classical technical
style. “Name gemäß Auftrag – Farbe nach Wunsch“ (“Name on commission
– Colours by choice“). This slogan includes for the commissioner two possible
ways of influencing the content and form of the work. After choosing from
the 110 colours on offer, all he has to do is make a decision about the
person represented. In my case the WINKELMANN shines out in white Helvetica
italic letters in a sea of monochrome Delft-blue which developed its own
life, eluding the artist’s influence, in the painting process. The colour
surrounding it lends the proper name the aura of a publicity spot. This
performative strategy was expanded in the work “4 Möglichkeiten involviert”
(1996) (4 Possibilities Involved) in the one-woman show at the Otto Schweins
Gallery in Cologne. Visitors to the gallery could choose from four propositions:
piping hot tea, a warm jacket, a good joke, or a swig of Vodka. Each one
of these options is a proven way of stepping up the visitor’s body temperature,
but in every instance in a barely perceptible way. These immediate and
direct effects of art on the onlooker are recurrent and highly diversified
moments in Westerwinter’s works. They play on expectational types of behaviour
which are often indistinct in respect of contemporary art. “You want art
to give you something, well, you’re getting it here!“, explains Westerwinter
to the solarium user. Even to someone who doesn’t feel like asking questions,
she offers something to take away, if only this dash of artificial suntan.
The person may not have understood a thing, but at least he’s got a tan!
Love passes by way of the stomach and art must penetrate beneath the epidermis.
If you want to get to the mind, you must first pass through the body. The
effects of the solarium and of the “four-ways-of-getting-warm“ are actually
alike; if they are perceptible, they are only very slightly so in both
cases. Their lasting quality is almost nil, but their presence is immediately
perceptible in the split second.

Things are quite different in the JA-Tattoos
or Yes-Tattoos. Westerwinter relies here on the possibility of broaching
a work with long-term consequences. In the form of a work-in-progress,
this action has already been undertaken in many other places with just
as much success. The visitor has a chance to accept a free-of-charge JA-Tattoo,
which will be done on the spot and straightaway by a professional tattoo
artist. There’s nothing that extraordinary about this, you’ll say, in this
times when every other body is decorated all over, and even in the most
incongruous parts, with tattoos and shiny metal. Before the body cult underwent
its hedonistic boom in the wave of rave and techno culture, tattoos, as
signs of individuality and non-conformism, were only to a few people’s
taste. But the artist is now offering you a uniform and prefabricated tattoo,
bearing a clear and joyous message. JA/Yes. And to boot, it is yours forever
and a day, without costing you a thing. Furthermore, you can test things
first with the advertising flyers for the “JA-Tattoo-Studio”, transfers
like those that magazines for young people and chewing-gum distributors
used to offer, before deciding where to have your tattoo done, on your
arm, neck or backside, whichever best suits Westerwinter’s “optimism optimizer“.
Just say Yes to JA. You won’t regret it, for a brief moment the pain of
the pricks guarantees you the real experience of your ego. With my JA near
my right ankle, I get the impression that I’ve once more gone beyond the
above-mentioned “personal investment.“ This JA that won’t wash off...,
for the rest of my life, clings to my skin like a seal. The thought that
a countless horde of other people are wearing it, albeit not all in the
same place, but at least in the same form, is at once comforting and irksome.
Whereas in the professional ethics of tattoo artists all tattoos are regarded
as works of art, and keep the cachet of a unique one-off. But it is precisely
this ambivalence that hallmarks many of Westerwinter’s works. In addition
to the fact that they seem to want to be applied first and foremost on
the surface. Like the “Silikonlappen zur Herstellung von möglicherweise
Verdammte Drecksau“ (”Silicon-duster for the production of potential Bloody
Bitch“). Who’s the bitch? And why? How come the artist has labelled a whole
series of her works with this kind of abuse? All the more so because, by
this inflationist use, she seems once again to be relieving it of its edge.
We should not forget that Westerwinter is a sculptress above all else,
and that, as such, she handles material, be it – as in the example of the
silicon-duster – by casting making identical reproductions of already existing
surfaces, by the adornment of a living surface marked as if by a label
of the JA logo, or by all-over embellishment, in the sense of an artificial
suntan. This latter is, in the end, nothing other than a standardized form
of superficial finishing, as it appears, too, in the works with lozenge
motifs (“Karo-Muster-Arbeiten“) in the “Erziehung statt Dekoration“ series
(“Education rather than Decoration“). In a way, Westerwinter thus unmasks
the ubiquitous aspiration to embellishment by standardization. And here
it makes no odds whether we are dealing with a refined body tan, a nonconformist
tattoo, or a middle-class trend to do with the commonplace comfort suggested
by a red lozenge pattern. So we can also understand the countless policemen
during the opening of her one-woman show at the Kassel Kunstverein, who,
with their uniformed presence, did not come across merely as a multiple,
standardized decorative element, but at the same time raised the issue
of the whys and wherefores of this presence. It just so happens that this
issue refers once more to the art consumer, who, in every artistic action,
senses a premeditated gesture. Quite right, say I! But intentionally headed
in another direction, for here, once again, it was a matter of challenging
and hampering expectational behaviour – or behaviour prompted by insecurity,
perhaps, to put it more succinctly. For who would not lose their cool in
the presence of such a lot of guardians of law and order, officially assigned
and appointed.

Westerwinter’s fragrant works are undoubtedly
less visible, but not less present. Like “nie nie sagen“ (“never say never“),
as part of the “ONTOM” show in the Galerie für Zeitgenössische
Kunst Leipzig in May 1998, for example. From the entrance itself, a pleasant
waft of coffee welcomed the visitor, who did not instantly link it with
the exhibition. It was actually possible to imagine the inevitable “Museum
Cafeteria“ close by the cash-desk. But in the show there was no Café
to sit down in, and no coffee to drink. The aroma was offered like a pure
olfactory experience, and in the end it was unreal, not least because it
was synthetically produced. No chemical gas launcher, no, something essentially
more subtle: the smells released by dispensers do away with any possible
(mal)odorous molecules there may be, and replace them by this concocted
perfume (inoffensive for human beings and animals, according to the manufacturer).
The intensely spicy aroma of coffee had already fired Duchamp with enthusiasm.
In the famous “Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme“ held in
1938 in Paris, coffee grains were roasted over a stove. He experienced
that moment, which was the most real and the most familiarly humdrum of
the exhibition, as especially surreal, because, for him, it bolstered the
artificial character of the surrounding ambience of the show. “Nie nie
sagen“ is included in a similar ambivalence. Because of its penetrating
intensity, the at first positively stimulating smell soon becomes almost
nasty. The positive properties of the famous stimulant, which has the virtue
of encouraging communication (following the very widespread simplistic
idea which associates salutary aroma and wholesome world), are only dispensed
when it is consumed with moderation. In excess, coffee makes the nerves
jangle, reinforces stress and can have harmful effects on the health.
Likewise here: a slight influence on the onlooker’s psyche may have unpleasant
side-effects, akin to the minor irritations already described, if too much
is consumed: possible skin burn, as with too much vodka sampling. In these
works, the seesaw between good and evil, in the sense of the capsizing
of constructive qualities which turn into destructive effects, is thus
envisaged from the beginning. Nothing that had the appearance of good has
ever been altogether good. In this sense, Westerwinter offloads on to the
onlooker not only responsibility for what he/she is doing, which is in
any event their lot, but above all responsibility for his/her physical
and mental investment in the works themselves. Don’t start thinking about
any pedagogic attitude on the part of the artist, for here, in the first
instance, there is no question of getting the onlooker to become aware
of his duty as recipient. Rather, Westerwinter’s works contain the acceptance
of failure within them, the way any individual decision implies a potential
flop. But isn’t this precisely what makes life so thrilling?